Well, I’ve been tinkering with the boot loader code, I did this kind of ‘midi updatable firmware’ before for the Zeit Sequencer main CPU, but that was a few years ago and I’ve forgotten how to do a lot of it, so it’s coming on slowly.

I’ve been tinkering with an I2C based EEPROM for patch memory, why? Well it uses only 2 wires for control, and I have two spare pins on the AVR so it seemed ideal. The other advantage is that I shouldn’t need to “stop” the interrupts when saving a pattern, so no more ‘hiccups’ whilst saving. But there’s a problem, because it uses only 2 wires the protocol is a bit ‘awkward’ so it’s taking me longer than I had hoped.

In thoery this should give GorF upto 64 pattern memories, the more observant of you will have noticed two extra buttons on the prototype, one for load and one is for save. The planned method of operation is that you push load, or save, then push button 1 – 8 for bank and then push 1 – 8 again for pattern.

My PC I use for coding also died (wouldn’t you know it) so I had to stop for a while, now I have one of those dinky “netbook” things, so I can code whilst sitting on the sofa, instead of being stuck in my cold garage, so I’m hoping things should move a little faster.

The PCB is winging it’s way to me, looks like it left Ireland today according to the tracking…

Oh, one of the things I like about PCB-Pool is that they give you pictures of your board whilst they’re making it, below is the board that’s on it’s way to me -

As you can see, for the prototype I’ve not bothered with silk screening as it adds about 20 euros to the cost. I plan to take pictures of the board during each stage of assembly and post them as it’s done. It should only take me 20 or 30 minutes to build. I have to say, I’m getting quite excited about this little project

This entry was posted
on Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 at 11:23 pm and is filed under Electronics, GorF, Instruments.
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